Tuesdsay, 12/13/16

Tuesday, 12/6/16

After months of drought, the rain has definitely been falling!  We have spent the last 3 class days indoors... and enjoyed it!  The students play board games and chess during lunchtime and when they have free time at the end of the day.  No cabin fever for us!


The next couple weeks are going to be a little hectic!  After spelling review and phonics, the Chicken Group began work on their video for their Where the Sidewalk Ends poetry recitation project.  They will hopefully finish this up on Thursday, and then both classes will be working on memorizing My Shadow.

The Guinea Group reviewed their spelling lists and began their study of MacBeth.  This is rich in new vocabulary and flowery language, so we are taking this in baby steps.  Although this is Shakespeare for Kids, it's not completely watered down!  We read through the first three pages together, discussing the setting, the characters as they are introduced, and any confusing word use.  The students will be rereading this at home, as well as writing a short summary of what we have read. 

The class reviewed vocabulary list 7, and discussed the lesson in the book.  They also worked on mastery during handwriting.  For those in the cursive book, capital letters seem to be tricky to memorize.  Mr. Jim will be focusing on this until the students improve.



The class was very excited to be able to continue their homemade review games in history class.  They will be wrapping up this unit, as well as Chapter 18 before Christmas break.


In grammar, the Cow Group completed the preparations for their upcoming Conjunction video!  They will be recording on Thursday and putting it all together next week!  The Horse group continued to learn about the four types of sentences, and how to diagram them.  Today's lesson was on locating the subject of a question.  They learned how to flip the words around in a question so that the subject and verb(s) are more easily found.  Then, they diagrammed questions, commands (which have an understood 'you' as the subject), and statements.  They will be working more on this at home tomorrow in order to help it "stick"!

The students took turns reading aloud in their favorite books today.  The kids like this so much that Mr. Jim has to set a timer to make sure everyone gets a turn!  Both classes will be working on writing dialogue by creating conversations between themselves and a visitor from another country or even another planet.  The students will be working on writing their dialogue at home tomorrow, and then will be able to share their writing with the class.

After math independent study time, the reviewed all of the land biomes that they have been studying for the last few weeks.  Then, we discussed marine and freshwater environments and ways to protect them.  These students are so very excited about their biome dioramas!  We had a diorama brainstorming session, and came up with many ideas that they can use at home.  We will bring all of the projects to class on Tuesday of next week, creating a full blown zoo!

As the semester comes to a close, I have been reflecting on just how awesome this little group of children has been to teach!  They have been a JOY!